


For the Sake of Driving

by fade_into_the_dusk_with_me



Category: The X-Files
Genre: (anyone else?that weird terror of leaving the car bc it feels too soon?no?), Angst, F/M, No beta we die like cowards & people posting too late to ask, a feeling i get strongly & whaddya do with feelings??project them of course!!, anxiety mention, but not really anxiety. idk, i am posting this past 3 am. so theres that, is that what this is?, nighttime drives are magic & medicine. i dont make the rules, selfprojection, so. maybe, um. impulse fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29689944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fade_into_the_dusk_with_me/pseuds/fade_into_the_dusk_with_me
Summary: Born from a prompt by @soprompt on Tumblr ("it's a little too late" -to which my brain just went 'oh yeah. time' which is a misinterpretation, i know, bUt. by the time i realised i was too into it & i refuse to turn back now. mwhaha) i wrote when i absolutely should've been doing other stuff, but, yknow what, leave me alone. 🥰mulder calls scully to get out of his head & his house.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19





	For the Sake of Driving

**Author's Note:**

> started writing this, was sort of 'meh' about it, but then i let myself go full over the top cringy poetry on it, & now its like this tacky bag i own, that is potentially objectively ugly, but i have an affection for it 🥰  
> notes from tumblr (wrote it on tumblr): (bc sometimes i get anxious & itch to get out.) - wait. i just realised this was probably not intended to be to do with time. whoops. ah well, too late now- just go with it🙃 felt a bit rubbish today & i wrote this in one silly little sitting (extended by a few extra little silly sittings) so pls be forgiving when reading this😅 (wow my brain just went ‘metaphor dump’ i apologise for how wordy & waffly this gets, but there are a couple of bits in there that i am actually *relatively* proud of! anyway, pls let me know what you think- i crave interaction & validation 🙃 (i googled mulders address for this silly little bit of selfprojection - are you proud of me?? also, idk what care scully has/drives, but apparently they often use fords, so i just went with it)  
> For the tumblr prompt 'it's a little too late' by @soprompt

**“It’s a little too late.”**

~~~

She said this softly, pressed against the cool plastic of the phone. She said this softly.

He was silent. There was the rustle of the breeze, the murmur of the dressing gown against her skin as she shifted slightly.

‘I- I know, Scully. I’m sorry, I just-’

The pause was tangible.

She wants to reach out & pull it to her, pull him back to her. From wherever it was he had gone. She waits for his voice to spark back into existence on the other end of the line. She waits for it to breach the distance (why did it feel so far away?).

Outside, an ambulance cries tragedy to the night sky. The lights of it strike her pillow in gasps - one, two, three flashes barely breach the darkness of her room. Here’s the rumble of a train, now, reminding her it’s not just dying people who have somewhere to be. A pipe groaned & complained, somewhere behind her, to the crumbling brickwork, discontent rippling through the building.

He was still there. But silent. ( _Was he still there?)_ She goes to prompt him, but the words dry on her lips & her tongue lies still, in wait. When he speaks, she feels it. Against her skin. She feels every inch of its journey to her, through phonewires & walls, past ambulances & trains & pipes & a hundred sleeping people. It’s coarse & quiet, & there’s the inexplicable feeling of tears, creeping - _climbing_ \- up her throat.

‘I just. I need to drive, Scully.’

It’s trivial & bizarre & it _really is_ too late. But she feels the cracks - chips - in the paint of his voice, & she tracks them ever-so-softly, with tentative hands, ears, & with her bleary eyes - imagines them running finely over his broken face.

‘Yeah- um, yeah, alright.’ She nods along to herself, as if he can see her. As if it matters.

~~

They’d do this sometimes. _Drive_. They were always driving, it seemed. But when it was dark like this & he was scared like this, or tired like this, or just utterly numb like this, it was different. The curve of the road up ahead could feel like a whole conversation; the silence, an opening, & they’d both sit there, like staring at a sterile wound.

_You show me yours, & I’ll show you mine._

It was unspoken, most of the time. 

He saw it once, in her face, & was surprised by it: _the terror of home_. 

It was after Tooms, & her necklace round his fingers, his spit against her skin. She was surprised _herself_ , a little. It had welled up in her throat, like something that wanted _out_ , with an intensity that stopped her heart & had her itching to lock herself in the car, to chain herself to her seatbelt. And when he’d turned, slightly, to say ‘Next left, right, Scully?’ in that soft way (this was a pointless confirmation. He knew the way. It was more of a code - an _‘are you alright - still breathing back there? Do you need something? ~~Do you need me to die for you? i will, i will~~ ’_ dressed up about as subtly as a clown in a neon trenchcoat) she felt like screaming. 

She found her terror sitting waiting in the back of her throat, like a man in a vent, dripping bile. She wanted to gag.

That was the first time. She’d tried to speak, but ‘not yet’ feels like it requires more explanation than silence, & silence was easy. 

So he’d turned right. 

He’d driven down streets Scully hadn’t paid attention to, with her head against the glass, eyes soothed by the blurred lights of other people’s sanctuaries - intersecting, momentarily, with her own suspended moment - and very gradually & all at once she’d felt the world detach from them - let them drift in their own little orbit, marked off by the borders of the car doors & the muddied wheels.

She closed her eyes & let herself drift. She closed her eyes & trusted him, to bring them softly back to earth.

~~

That had been the first time. She’d done it for him once or twice since, after cases. When he stares at the condensation on the window, she wonders if he sees Samantha - if he’s looking for her reflection in the sparse specks of stars, smeared through the glass. They don’t have music going - after all, silence was easy. _Silence_ learnt to sit in the backseat, like a child - strapped in & along for the ride, patiently unbroken. And when they pulled up (and they _always_ pulled up. But it was easier like this, when they could play with the time - wind it round their fingers like thread, have it glinting pretty colours up at them - it felt much more like a choosing, much less like being chosen. It took a weight off her lungs.) - _and when they pulled up_ , one of them would stoop, bundle it up in their arms & heave it softly up the steps, to sit with it cradled at their chest, warm & soft & smelling of safety, & the other, & orbits outside the turn of the earth & monsters.

It was always an extension, though. Never anything quite as explicitly blatant as this. So long as it was wrapped up in some pre-existing thing, what did it matter? A drive home with a few extra turns, that’s all. 

But here she was, the chill of 4:15am nipping at her through the soft blue of her dressing gown, hair tousled slightly in a way that didn’t matter, because who was around anyway? And here he was, looking dejected & disposed of, in yesterday’s shirt & self-loathing. She thinks he starts crying around the third right, after one left, a roundabout & what was maybe a train station she knew. Silence sits in the back seat, quiet & attentive. 

Scully’s feet feel out of place in proper shoes on the pedals. She misses her slippers. Her hands are shaking a little, if she stops & listens for it - just the tiniest bit in shock at this abominable awakening she seems compliant to. 

He’s trying to disappear in on himself, curled against the creases in his shirt and the door of Scully’s Ford. He’s trying to get away from whatever thought snagged at him this time. Sometimes it wasn’t even a thought - sometimes, she knew, it was like tasting something in the air, drinking it in & finding that your lungs weren’t built to handle it. Sometimes it was like that: like choking. The car roams the streets she barely registers, carrying them gently. They don’t speak. They don’t need to - the shivering breaths off to her right are a fervent apology, a narrative - an explanation, a plea: _don’t leave me to this. I’m not sure if I can fend it off alone._

Air feels more ‘theirs’ in these ways. They can reclaim it like this - containing it in a metal box & wandering. The sky isn’t up there, it seems - someone’s draped a black cloth over them both, to preserve the decency of the heavens. Perhaps they’re in their own outer space after all.

Silence leans over to press a kiss to both their pallid foreheads. 

Softly, softly (isn’t everything, in these, their orbits?) he takes the cord of her dressing gown in his clenched hands. It’s loose & she forgot she hadn’t bothered to do it up, & he holds one end under his chin, grip like a drowning man.

His buoyancy aid takes the next three lefts. 

She washes him up on the shore of Hegal Place, but there’s reluctance coming off him in desperate waves. She feels like a child, playing telephone - he holds her dressing gown cord like one end of the string, to connect himself to _someone,_ thoughts reaching her through the quaking of their connection - unspoken, across the width of the car. She sees him soften at the turn of the key, again - at the reborn growl of the engine. There’s a tired sort of happy nestled in her heart as they pull away again.

She wants to huff with laughter at the time, blinking up red at her, like a warning she ignores, in favour of the man in the corner of the seat who would do the same for her. Who she’ll do what she can to help outrun his mind.

 _It’s okay,_ she supposes, _they can keep driving for a little longer._

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading - means a lot. i can live off comments for months so pls let me know what you think??(if you particularly want to- no pressure x) 🥰
> 
> i know, i know - the whole 'do you want me to die for you?' thing was a little cheesy/overdramatic, perhaps (especially considering how early on that bit is but shhh. i like the way it rolled off my mind-tongue, if that makes sense), but i crossed it out so. yknow. what more do ya want.
> 
> its 4am. im pretty sure im insane.  
> but i like posting fic then going to sleep. thats always fun.


End file.
